loll 
 Wit 
 
The Choice of Heracles 
 
 An Ac Vess 
 
 Before the Students of Marion Institute 
 
 and Judson College 
 
 at 
 
 Marion, Alabama, March 3, 1914 
 
 By 
 FAIRFAX |IAKRISON 
 
 President, Southern Railway Company 
 
OCT 2 7 1314 
 
THE CHOICE OF HERACLES. 
 
 "To the entent that I wyll declare howe gouernours of 
 realmes and cities may be prepared, I will use the policie of 
 a wyse and counnynge gardener: who purposynge to haue 
 in his gardeine a fyne and preciouse herbe, that shulde be 
 to hym and all others repairynge thereto, excellently como- 
 diouse or pleasant, he will first serche throughout his gar- 
 deyne where he can finde the most melowe and fertile erth ; 
 and therein wil he put the sede of the herbe to growe and 
 be norisshed." — Sir Thomas Elyot. 
 
 It is our pride to term the South conservative, not, as some Philis- 
 tines connote the word, with an intendment of what is behind the times, 
 but with a congratulatory appreciation that here are a people alive to all 
 the real progress of the age in which we live, but still clinging with respect 
 to that concept which spells patriotism- — -the subordination of the indi- 
 vidual to the community under equal laws. Here, as in few parts of our 
 broad United States, men still regard that as good which their fathers 
 did because their fathers did it. We live at the end of an old era as well 
 as at the beginning of a new. We can still look back with perspective 
 while our eyes are beginning to reflect the light of vision of the future. 
 With this great privilege of immediate contact with a background of 
 which we can well be proud, surrounded by the stately relics of a race 
 which moved slowly perhaps, but was guided more by principle than by 
 sentiment and emotion — a race which none dares contemn, but all gentle- 
 men are bred to honor — it is fitting that the South should equip her 
 sons for the contests of the new life with whatever is best in the tradition 
 of the past ; that we should pass on the torch our forefathers passed to 
 us, if it still illuminates, as I shall today try to maintain that it does. 
 
 Our modern creed tells us that those who laid the foundation of 
 our nation demanded too large a sacrifice of the inherent rights of the 
 individual to the general good of the commonweal; that for all the fine 
 French philosophy of the Declaration of Independence, the government 
 which resulted from it was rather a government of Man than of men 
 and women ; in fine, that it gave opportunity for the very things it sought 
 to overthrow — the growth of classes and special privilege. In our reac- 
 tion it may be questioned whether we are not going too far in our con- 
 cern for the Individual, and whether a modicum of that kind of education 
 which formed the principles of the Fathers might not teach us that, 
 
after all, the rights of the Individual conservatively might ever be sub- 
 jected to such limitation as sentimentality can not be expected to appre- 
 ciate, but which wisdom, founded on a knowledge of human history, 
 and indeed of Nature herself, can safely impose. One is reminded of a 
 philosophical observation by Darwin: 
 
 • 
 
 "Perfect equality among the individuals composing the Fuegian 
 tribes must for a long time retard their civilization. As we see 
 those animals whose instinct compels them to live in society, and 
 obey a chief, are most capable of improvement, so it is with the 
 races of mankind. Whether we look at it as a cause or a conse- 
 quence, the most civilized always have the most artificial gov- 
 ernments." 
 
 There have been three previous periods in the history of the world 
 when men, in reaction against the tyranny of classes or of states, were 
 actuated by that high passion of idealism for the individual which 
 breathed through the last inaugural address which has come to us from 
 the Capitol in Washington. The literature of Greece reveals a moment 
 when men were freeing themselves from the grip of the state and seeking 
 an unrestrained expression of individual rights, with the privilege to 
 discover and to explore themselves. It is no longer the age of ^schylus, 
 finding its catharsis in the poet's rehearsal of the fortunes and feelings 
 of kings and prophets and princely heroines — it is the age of Euripides 
 the disintegrator, who searched the heart of personal experience and 
 gave a poignant expression to what he discovered. He in turn yielded 
 the stage to Menander and the unheroic emotions of Everyman in the 
 New Comedy, just as Browning has given way to Bernard Shaw. 
 
 Again, at the end of the splendid history of the Roman Republic, 
 man sought once more to live for himself and no longer for the state. 
 Literature ceases to be epic in the old Greek sense; it has become per- 
 sonal, esoteric. Catullus plays upon our own private experience as 
 freshly as the Lydian waters still laugh on Sirmio, today as when, return- 
 ing from Oriental wanderings, he came once more to his beloved Lago 
 di Garda. But chiefly do we find the new note in Virgil — no longer the 
 stern, compelling eloquence of Ennius, but a sweet sentimentalism which 
 a school-girl can understand. 
 
 Once more, at the close of another age — that of feudal Europe — 
 do we find men considering intensely the rights, and even more the 
 wrongs, of the individual. We are taught to look upon the defense of 
 
Calas by Voltaire as psychologically the highest moment of a great career 
 of illumination. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to suggest that each of these periods of 
 divagation of the interests of the citizen from those of the state was fol- 
 lowed by a subjugation of the dearest of all individual rights — that of 
 political liberty; that Philip and his son put out forever the lamp of 
 Greek liberty; that Augustus destroyed the fabric which more than any- 
 thing material represented "the grandeur that was Rome" ; that Napoleon 
 crushed during a cruel hour a nascent national independence. It is 
 equally unnecessary to deduce from what has been said that individuals 
 find their freest expression only under personal tyranny, which, depriving 
 them of concern in the welfare of all, diverts them to a private fingering 
 and fondling of their own souls. It is enough to realize that we are 
 living today in another such age of dissent from the standards of the 
 past; that our literary prophets drive home disillusion in order to make 
 us modern — Ibsen, behind the leering mask of comedy, with the same 
 clairvoyance as moved Erasmus or Lucretius. 
 
 Our search is, then, for a gospel which each of us may interpret 
 as authority for the freest choice of moral standards; and we hurry 
 through all beliefs, dissecting as we go those which have been held in 
 the most sacred esteem. We seek natural explanations of those dear 
 prejudices which have moved men to wonder and secret sympathy 
 through countless ages, and what was religion has for some become 
 merely mores, taboos, sun myths — an interesting subject for research, 
 but no longer a restraint of conduct. 
 
 And so our modern system of education, discontent with the studies 
 which have moved men to high and noble endeavor, prescribes in place 
 of them a pabulum of applied science — the most reasonable, as it is the 
 most dreary, of the utilities of the modern world. We hear accepted 
 leaders of opinion insist that we shall no longer waste our time with 
 building of character; that the true end of education is to sharpen our 
 wits for the conflict of life, to arm ourselves with weapons of imme- 
 diate use. 
 
 All the cry of the schools is of vocational education. The lad who 
 has learned to read is to begin, forsooth, at once to prepare himself for 
 a trade or even a profession. To study the classics, to drink inspiration 
 at the fountains of the past, is no more profitable, we are told, than the 
 efforts of Tantalus to slake his thirst. I do not mean to suggest that 
 vocational education is without its uses — far from it: but that among 
 
such men and women as I am addressing today it might well be confined 
 to the individual whose bent of mind discovers a probable career as a 
 technician. Even if a man is eventually to specialize, he is a sounder 
 man if he does so on a solid foundation of tradition. Vocational educa- 
 tion as a system for all is what I deplore. It is a sage counsel only for 
 the industrially inept, for wage-earning mechanics at the highest, but 
 most necessary shall we say for the negro — not for potential leaders of 
 men. The trail of it is, however, everywhere evident, even in our higher 
 schools and colleges, with the result that we are breeding a race of average 
 men whose education operates like a labor union to deprive the best of 
 the opportunity of his natural equipment, and to reduce efficiency to a 
 level attainable by the incompetent. This is responsible for the most-to- 
 be-regretted type in our industrial life today — the man in authority who 
 is merely an official, competent to enforce rules, diligent, earnest, faithful 
 it may be, but incapable of imagining new things. 
 
 With all deference to current opinion to the contrary, I believe with 
 old Sir Thomas Elyot that proper education for holding places of author- 
 ity is as vital to the welfare of the state as the education of the many. 
 As we are now facing new and fundamental questions of politics, of 
 social science and economics, there was perhaps never a time when, as a 
 nation, we more required leaders of poise and self-restraint, capable of 
 bringing to the solution of the new the experience of the old, not that 
 they may solve these questions only as they have been solved in the past, 
 not that they may resist the pressure of the new, but that they may be able 
 to choose what is sound and avoid what is merely specious. 
 
 I yield to none in admiration of the man who knows — the man 
 equipped with modern science; but I venture, nevertheless, to assert that 
 without background, as he too often is, he may be a narrow man, and in 
 very truth plays, after all, but a small part in the world. He can not 
 move men to action — he can only facilitate their poor material and human 
 convenience, which breeds more wants than it satisfies; he can not stir 
 the heart to singing — he can only reckon its pulsations. 
 
 My appeal is, then, to a view of life which will take account of the 
 past as well as of the future, in education as in the conduct of affairs 
 for which education is the preparation. The object is often made to 
 that kind of equipment which is founded largely upon study of the 
 humanities, that such a man enters life a mere amateur. He knows 
 nothing useful, and so, it is said, he is unfit for industry, which in our 
 age and in our civilization is the chief end of life, and so of education; 
 
that, for example, in international commercial competition he is putty in 
 the hands of a technically trained German. I venture, however, to main- 
 tain the thesis that a man with a literary education is as well equipped 
 to lead the industrial world as is a vocationally educated physicist or 
 mechanical engineer of similar natural parts and character. It is a famil- 
 iar experience in industry, as it is practised today, to see the man who 
 has little or no special training in science — indeed, alas ! sometimes little 
 education of any kind outside of the school of experience — leading suc- 
 cessfully some great industry, solving its problems with full use of all 
 the mysteries of applied science, and reaping the rewards of power and 
 honor which come with successful leadership. How he does this is not 
 far to seek. He hires the specialist as he requires him, and that too, 
 unfortunately for current educational theory, usually at a comparatively 
 small wage. He does not himself need to know what others can tell; 
 he can use technical men as he uses a table of logarithms. But, for 
 leadership in its largest aspect, he does need a personal and ever available 
 equipment of high principle, courage, both moral and physical, and 
 imagination — qualities which are native in some characters, but may be 
 cultivated in most through touch and contact with the thoughts and 
 minds of the great souls who have by those qualities achieved great 
 deeds in the past — that immortal company the tradition of whose acts or 
 words constitutes the body of literature which we term the classics. 
 
 I urge, then, upon those who would lead in industry, as in other 
 conflicts of life, to build character and imagination by the study of the 
 humanities. It is, however, no easy school that I counsel, no promenade 
 or pasear through the contemporary literature of predigested knowledge — 
 the books about books — which crowd our libraries, the ancient history 
 drugged with modern politics, not Grote and Mommsen, but Thucydides 
 and Tacitus. I summon him who would know and understand 
 
 "the springs 
 Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world," 
 
 back to the sources, to the originals in all ages, that by the very labor 
 of the search the knowledge may be more securely gained and taste 
 the sweeter in achievement. He has weary days and straining nights 
 before him, but he has deathless privilege, the communion with great 
 souls. Scholarship in its technical sense is not now my subject. It is 
 not the life of an Oxford don, nor of a German privatdocent, that I 
 
hold up to the emulation of a young American who would become a 
 captain of industry. The life of a Scaliger, a Casaubon, a Bentley 
 would be an anachronism in our teeming world of industry. But from 
 such as these there is much more than scholarship to learn. Because 
 their tools are those I recommend to him who would know how to lead 
 men, and because their methods are those of the painful endeavor which 
 alone yields enduring success in any form of human enterprise, their 
 lives may be our inspiration as we read the books which their labors 
 have made readable. Here, for example, is Joseph Scaliger pleasantly 
 pictured for us by his great contemporary Casaubon, ever debonair in 
 the use of his hard-won learning: 
 
 "A man who, by the indefatigable devotion of a stupendous 
 genius to the acquisition of knowledge, had garnered up vast stores 
 of uncommon lore. And his memory had such a happy readiness 
 that, whenever the occasion called for it, whether it were in con- 
 versation or whether he were consulted by letter, he was ready to 
 bestow with lavish hand what had been gathered by him in the sweat 
 of his brow." 
 
 So it is that true classical study can never be dilettantism. "Not 
 without dust and heat" may one obtain a literary education which may 
 serve in the practical life to come. I will take the liberty of illustrating 
 my point by a version from one of the books I recommend. It is the 
 old, old parable of the joy which comes in work, as Prodicus the Sophist 
 wrote and polished and read it to numberless audiences of young Greeks 
 in the great fifth century, and was commended therefor by Socrates. 
 Its moral is today no less pertinent than is its charm of expression, 
 though the full measure of that charm must, indeed, be sought in the 
 Greek original. It is the parable of The Choice of Heracles. 
 
 "When Heracles wjgjs emerging from boyhood into the bloom of 
 youth, having reached that season in which the young man, now 
 standing upon the verge of independence, shows plainly whether 
 he will enter upon the path of virtue or of vice, he went forth into 
 a quiet place and sat debating with himself which of these two 
 paths he should pursue ; and as he there sat musing, there appeared 
 to him two women of great stature which drew nigh to him. The 
 one was fair to look upon, frank and free by gift of nature, her 
 limbs adorned with purity and her eyes with bashfulness ; sobriety 
 set the rhythm of her gait, and she was clad in white apparel. The 
 
other was of a different type: the fleshy softness of her limbs 
 betrayed her nurture, while the complexion of her skin was em- 
 bellished that she might appear whiter and rosier than she really 
 was, and her figure that she might seem taller than nature had 
 made her; she stared with wide-open eyes, and the raiment where- 
 with she was clad served but to reveal the ripeness of her bloom. 
 With frequent glances she surveyed her person, or looked to see if 
 others noticed her ; while ever and anon she fixed her gaze upon the 
 shadow of herself intently. 
 
 "Now when these two had drawn near to Heracles, she who was 
 first named advanced at an even pace towards him, but the other, 
 in her eagerness to outstrip her, ran forward to the youth, exclaim- 
 ing, "I see you, Heracles, in doubt and difficulty what path of life 
 to choose ; make me your friend and I will lead you to the pleasant- 
 est road and the easiest. This I promise you: you shall taste all of 
 life's sweets and escape all bitters. In the first place, you shall not 
 trouble your brain with war or business ; other topics shall engage 
 your mind : your only speculation, what meat or drink you shall 
 find agreeable to your palate ; what delight of ear or eye ; what 
 pleasure of smell or touch ; how you shall pillow your limbs in 
 softest slumber; how cull each individual pleasure without alloy of 
 pain ; and if ever the suspicion steal upon you that the stream of 
 joys will one day dwindle, trust me, I will not lead you where you 
 shall replenish the store by toil of body and trouble of soul. No! 
 others shall labor, but you shall reap the fruit of their labors ; you 
 shall withhold your hand from nought which shall bring you gain. 
 For to all my followers I give authority and power to help them- 
 selves freely from every side.' 
 
 "Heracles, hearing these words, made answer : 'What, O lady, is 
 the name you bear?' To which she: 'Know that my friends call me 
 Happiness, but they that hate me have their own nicknames for 
 me- — Vice and Naughtiness.' 
 
 "But just then the other of those fair women approached and 
 spoke: 'Heracles, I too am come to you, seeing that your parents 
 are well known to me, and in your nurture I have gauged your 
 nature ; wherefore T entertain good hope that if you choose the 
 path which leads to me, you shall greatly bestir yourself to be the 
 doer of many a doughty deed of noble emprise ; and that I too shall 
 be held in even higher honor for your sake, lit with the lustre shed 
 by valorous deeds. I will not cheat you with preludings of pleasure, 
 but I will relate to you the things that are according to the ordinances 
 of God in very truth. Know then that among things that are 
 lovely and of good report, not one have the gods bestowed upon 
 mortal man apart from toil and pains. Would you obtain the favor 
 of the gods, then must you pay these same gods service; would you 
 be loved by your friends, you must benefit these friends ; do you 
 
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 desire to be honored by the state, you must give the state your aid ; 
 do you claim admiration for your virtue from all Hellas, you must 
 strive to do some good to Hellas ; do you wish earth to yield her 
 fruits to you abundantly, to earth you must pay your court; do 
 you seek to amass riches from your flocks and herds, on them must 
 you bestow your labor ; or is it your ambition to be potent as a 
 warrior, able to save your friends and subdue your foes, then must 
 you learn the arts of war from those who have the knowledge, 
 and practise their application in the field when learned ; or would 
 you e'en be powerful of limb and body, then must you habituate 
 limbs and body to obey the mind, and exercise yourself with toil 
 and sweat. . . . Toils like these, O Heracles, son of noble 
 parents, it is yours to meet with, and, having endured, to enter into 
 the heritage assured you of transcendent happiness.' " 
 
 These are immanent lessons of success in a selfish world, but the 
 fierce joy which comes of consciousness of work well done is not the only 
 reward of him who builds his character upon the humanities. He who 
 equips himself for life with an education of science, but with "small 
 Latin and less Greek," what is his intellectual resource in his hours of 
 ease and divertisement? If he is a banker, like Sir John Lubbock, he 
 can doubtless amuse his leisure with ants and bees ; but if he is an 
 entomologist for his livelihood, he can not reasonably expect diversion 
 in banking as an avocation : it is probable that the Comptroller of the 
 Currency might intervene with an awful veto. But he who has founded 
 his career upon a study of the great dead whom we term the classics, 
 has not only a fund of experience and tradition of achievement to guide 
 and stimulate his workaday life, but, when work is done, he has a sweet 
 well of imagination to dip into, vastly to be preferred to the muck of a 
 modern literature of unrest and sordid discontent. He may betake him- 
 self to that wonderful isle of the poet's conjuring, there to invite his 
 soul and refresh his faculties. He, too, can live in Arcady. 
 
 "And I have fitted up some chambers there 
 Looking towards the golden Eastern air 
 And level with the living winds, which flow 
 Like waves above the living waves below. 
 I have sent books and music there, and all 
 Those instruments with which high Spirits call 
 The future from its cradle, and the past 
 Out of it? ^ravc, and make the present last 
 In thoughts and joys which sleep, but can not die. 
 Folded within their own eternity." 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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